Here’s How Much 2020 Presidential Candidate Amy Klobuchar Is Worth

When Amy Klobuchar went to Yale in the late 1970s, her father told her she needed to keep her spending to a minimum. Rather than pay to travel home to Minnesota, she often spent holiday breaks on campus. She earned extra money participating as a paid subject in scientific studies. One summer she worked on a construction crew with the Minnesota Highway Department. “No sign-holding for me—I pounded surveying stakes into the ground with an eight-pound maul,” she wrote in her 2015 book The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland.

Today that lesson from her dad appears to have put Klobuchar, 59, and her husband, John Bessler, 51, into a comfortable financial position. Forbes estimates the couple shares a $2 million net worth. Their assets include their Minneapolis home worth about $350,000, retirement accounts and mutual funds worth at least $850,000 and a federal pension worth $560,000—the result of over 12 years of Senate service.

Born in suburban Minneapolis, Klobuchar grew up as the daughter of a teacher and a local newspaper reporter. Her parents divorced when she was in high school, leaving their family in a “shaky” financial situation, Klobuchar wrote in her memoir. The valedictorian of her high school, she got into Yale, but her family didn’t quite qualify for financial aid. They were “caught in the middle-class crunch,” Klobuchar wrote. Her father agreed to pay for part of her school while she took out loans to cover the rest.

Klobuchar graduated in 1982, then headed to the University of Chicago for law school. She earned her second degree in 1985, then started her career in the private sector at a Minneapolis law firm. She made partner at the firm in 1992, married fellow attorney John Bessler in 1993 and gave birth to a daughter, Abigail, in 1995. In 1998, she ran and won the seat as the Hennepin county attorney and served in that job until 2006. That’s when she ran for Senate seat and won. Klobuchar has held the position ever since.

She and her husband have earned between $200,000 and $300,000 nearly every year since she joined the Senate. Her federal government salary amounted to $174,000 a year, and he also made six figures annually from teaching at George Washington University, Georgetown and the University of Baltimore, according to the couple’s tax returns. In 2015 Klobuchar earned an extra $68,000 in royalties from Macmillan Publishers for TheSenator Next Door. Bessler is also an author. He’s written books on legal topics like capital punishment, though their tax filings show that he typically reported a loss of several hundred dollars on income he earned as an author.

In 2007, Klobuchar filed a federal financial disclosure form, which requires officials to list assets in broad ranges, that showed holdings worth $326,000 to $1.4 million. Not much has changed in the dozen years since then. The disclosure she filed this year, as part of her presidential bid, included assets worth between $900,000 and $2.3 million. That disclosure did not include the value of their house, her federal pension or a Thrift Savings Plan, which disclosures show Klobuchar moved at least $170,000 into ten years ago.

Klobuchar wrote in her memoir that she and her husband, John, who grew up in a trailer park as one of six kids, were paying off the $60,000 he had taken out in student loans into their forties. In 2007, they paid off the mortgage on the three-bedroom, turn-of-the-century Minneapolis house they had purchased in 1996 for $169,000. Today they don’t have any debt, according to Klobuchar’s most recent financial disclosure and a review of public records.

Klobuchar and Bessler have contributed $70,000, or about 2% of their total earnings, to charity since 2006, according to their tax returns. Most of their filings do not detail where that money went, but her 2015 return shows gifts to Klobuchar’s alma mater, Yale ($82), education nonprofit Bridge2Rwanda ($1,473) and Friends of San Lucas ($300), a charity that supports the town of San Lucas, Guatemala.

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When Amy Klobuchar went to Yale in the late 1970s, her father told her she needed to keep her spending to a minimum. Rather than pay to travel home to Minnesota, she often spent holiday breaks on campus. She earned extra money participating as a paid subject in scientific studies. One summer she worked on a construction crew with the Minnesota Highway Department. “No sign-holding for me—I pounded surveying stakes into the ground with an eight-pound maul,” she wrote in her 2015 book The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland.

Today that lesson from her dad appears to have put Klobuchar, 59, and her husband, John Bessler, 51, into a comfortable financial position. Forbes estimates the couple shares a $2 million net worth. Their assets include their Minneapolis home worth about $350,000, retirement accounts and mutual funds worth at least $850,000 and a federal pension worth $560,000—the result of over 12 years of Senate service.

Born in suburban Minneapolis, Klobuchar grew up as the daughter of a teacher and a local newspaper reporter. Her parents divorced when she was in high school, leaving their family in a “shaky” financial situation, Klobuchar wrote in her memoir. The valedictorian of her high school, she got into Yale, but her family didn’t quite qualify for financial aid. They were “caught in the middle-class crunch,” Klobuchar wrote. Her father agreed to pay for part of her school while she took out loans to cover the rest.

Klobuchar graduated in 1982, then headed to the University of Chicago for law school. She earned her second degree in 1985, then started her career in the private sector at a Minneapolis law firm. She made partner at the firm in 1992, married fellow attorney John Bessler in 1993 and gave birth to a daughter, Abigail, in 1995. In 1998, she ran and won the seat as the Hennepin county attorney and served in that job until 2006. That’s when she ran for Senate seat and won. Klobuchar has held the position ever since.

She and her husband have earned between $200,000 and $300,000 nearly every year since she joined the Senate. Her federal government salary amounted to $174,000 a year, and he also made six figures annually from teaching at George Washington University, Georgetown and the University of Baltimore, according to the couple’s tax returns. In 2015 Klobuchar earned an extra $68,000 in royalties from Macmillan Publishers for TheSenator Next Door. Bessler is also an author. He’s written books on legal topics like capital punishment, though their tax filings show that he typically reported a loss of several hundred dollars on income he earned as an author.

In 2007, Klobuchar filed a federal financial disclosure form, which requires officials to list assets in broad ranges, that showed holdings worth $326,000 to $1.4 million. Not much has changed in the dozen years since then. The disclosure she filed this year, as part of her presidential bid, included assets worth between $900,000 and $2.3 million. That disclosure did not include the value of their house, her federal pension or a Thrift Savings Plan, which disclosures show Klobuchar moved at least $170,000 into ten years ago.

Klobuchar wrote in her memoir that she and her husband, John, who grew up in a trailer park as one of six kids, were paying off the $60,000 he had taken out in student loans into their forties. In 2007, they paid off the mortgage on the three-bedroom, turn-of-the-century Minneapolis house they had purchased in 1996 for $169,000. Today they don’t have any debt, according to Klobuchar’s most recent financial disclosure and a review of public records.

Klobuchar and Bessler have contributed $70,000, or about 2% of their total earnings, to charity since 2006, according to their tax returns. Most of their filings do not detail where that money went, but her 2015 return shows gifts to Klobuchar’s alma mater, Yale ($82), education nonprofit Bridge2Rwanda ($1,473) and Friends of San Lucas ($300), a charity that supports the town of San Lucas, Guatemala.